bound_lincoln (![]() ![]() @ 2014-05-08 19:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, guillaume danjou, high moon, lincoln carrick, one-shot, parker woodward, private, sofia martelli |
High Moon (Part Two of Three)
Date: 27 April 2013
Time: 8:39pm
Location: Warehouse District, Docks
Characters: Lincoln Carrick, Guillaume d'Anjou, Parker Woodward, Sofia Martelli
Description: Second in a three-part one-shot. Challenge from the Aim chat - 20,000 words, western and romance genres, featuring Lincoln and Guillaume (with appearances from others). Final part over the next week. First installment here.
Status: Private, complete.
After Guillaume had left, despite the shocking content of their conversation, Lincoln fell into a deep sleep, waking six or seven hours later with a stiff neck and a sore back from sitting up in his armchair all night and morning. The remainder of the day was spent in a state of restlessness and agitation, counting down the hours until nightfall.
Eventually, he climbed into his truck, gunned the engine and began the trek into the city, winding through the narrow forest pathways until he reached the main highway. He’d had a text from Guillaume not long before saying that while the people he was about to meet had some knowledge of the other world (supernatural seemed a silly phrase – they were both as natural as it came), it would be best not to let on precisely what he was until he had to. That did nothing for his mixed feelings about the whole endeavor, but a deal was a deal, and he would show. Eventually, the main road became increasingly urban as he made his way in to Crescent Cove, the scattering of buildings around the city limits giving way to more formalized grid systems, houses and gardens, apartment blocks, and offices.
Crescent Cove was barely a city, truth be told, particularly compared to megacities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It had maybe 200,000 people on any given day, and a curiously low tourist footfall. Indeed, from his time in the Army, whenever he’d said that was where he hailed from, it was uniformly met with puzzled looks. Even when he outlined exactly where it was, he had the feeling that people were humoring him with false recognition. It just didn’t feature heavily, aside from a few scattered mentions on the internet, and the occasional cartographer who didn’t seem to have a memory lapse when it came to including it on maps. Lincoln had always found this peculiar, but figured it was because Crescent Cove kind of just existed. It used to have industry during the war, but not anymore, and while it had some of the chains you might expect (not even Moscow escapes McDonalds), there were no bank headquarters here, no large-scale branches of corporations or significant produce, either in an industrial or agrarian sense.
Now, given what he knew about the real nature of the world, and the existence of magic, he wasn’t quite sure. He’d been doing his own research into the history of the city, venturing to the public libraries and reading up on its founding and growth since then. Some of the founding families’ names were still prominent today. Maybe Crescent Cove’s constant lack of attention wasn’t by accident or happenstance. Maybe, just maybe, it was deliberate.
He chewed over that thought as he made his way through the city center proper, weaving through to the industrial district, where the address of the warehouse had been. Traffic began to thicken into a stop-start motion, making the stream of cars, trucks and motorcycles seem like a jerky, spasmodic serpent coiling its way around the veins and arteries of the city streets. People walked in groups, heading from bar to bar or taking advantage of the last gasps of commerce in the day before the shops closed. Above, the sky was a deep cobalt, heralding the final approach into night as the last remnants of light gave way and the glittering streetlamps began to power up. He didn’t come here much, and he’d never been much of an urban man, but he could understand the cold beauty of the cityscape before him, and could see why it appealed to so many people.
There was security in tribes, a belonging that just couldn’t be gained by a solitary existence. He tried not to think of the deeper implications on his thoughtshift as it applied to his wider life, as he turned off the main thoroughfare and into the industrial district.
Given its history as a maritime center during the war, and still an occasional port for shipping firms, Crescent Cove maintained an unusually large warehouse sector near the docks, echoes of its former importance resounding through its location so near to the nominal heart of the city. He knew, though, that many of these lay empty, or otherwise hired for weeks at a time, rather than the more typical annual leases that the owners preferred. Indeed, even the ownership was disputed in some cases – most of the land was still owned, in part, by the Founding Families around here, but abrogated leases and a mark of the declining heavy industry of shipbuilding in the area had led many firms to either go under or pack up and leave for the more lucrative spots in Connecticut, New Jersey or New York, or even other seaside cities in Maine. Thus, the families refused to spend the money on renovating them while still technically holding a contract from others, and the City wasn’t prepared to step in with its limited purse either, leaving many of them to find more seedy applications. For anyone who had grown up in the county, like him, it was widely known that this wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to be at night, unless you had a thoroughly good reason for it. The Sheriff’s Office had tried a clean-up campaign several times over the years, which tended to improve it for a while before it once again sank into undesirability. A few unfortunate incidents with fires during the rave scene in the early Nineties had put a stop to it being used for impromptu, drug-fuelled parties, and while some buildings on the fringes had started to be reclaimed by nascent coffee-shop movements and trendy craft bars, it had yet to penetrate into the sector proper.
He wheeled past the last few signs of life and slowed down, crawling carefully through the tightly-packed avenues that hadn’t necessarily been designated as such, but were just natural corridors between the hulking, decrepit fasciae of crumbling warehouses. Small sources of light glowed sullenly from a handful of windows, and the occasional group of dock workers picked their way through, but otherwise it was pretty much deserted. He consulted the GPS, and quickly memorized the series of turns that would take him to Guillaume’s address.
It was another few minutes before he arrived, and on the outside, the warehouse didn’t seem as if there were any life whatsoever within. Litter skirted the walls and entranceways, and the lining of grime around the garage entrances made it seem as if cars hadn’t been this way for a while. The windows looked stone dead.
Lincoln double-checked the note and the GPS, this was definitely the place. He killed the engine and stepped out, one hand firmly on the revolver he had strapped to his thigh, courtesy of his Maine’s lack of a requirement for open carry. He closed the door with a soft thump, and breathed in the night. There, at the edges, he could just about detect the faint metallic whiff of magic. As if reading his mind, Guillaume appeared next to him.
“Nice piece,” he remarked dryly. “Where did you pick that up, the OK Corral?” Lincoln tried not to visibly start, although he felt his heart miss a beat and his adrenaline instantly spike up. He turned to face the man, who looked exactly the same as the other night, without a hair mussed or a bag under his eyes. The only difference was the drab black BDUs that he now wore, having disposed of the designer shirt and jeans. Lincoln, by contrast, hadn’t shaved since yesterday, and he hadn’t been getting much sleep over the past few days. His outfit still consisted of his uniform.
“Hadleyville, actually,” he said, and Guillaume’s mouth quirked up at the sides.
“Ah yes, High Noon?” He remarked, the slight French inflection managing to color the edge of his accent more than usual. “I was always an Eastwood aficionado.”
“Knew him, did you?” Lincoln replied, with a little more snark than he’d intended. He was still trying to get his head around the mechanics of vampirism, and five seconds with Google had shown him, definitively, that he wasn’t going to get any answers from the Internet. Guillaume didn’t say anything, merely kept up with the maddening half-smile, and motioned with his head towards the entrance of the run-down warehouse. He caught Lincoln’s eye as he stopped by the door.
“Looks can be deceiving,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Magic?” Lincoln asked, his hand moving away from the handle of his sidearm, but only slightly.
“Some in the city are, shall we say, adept at glamoring things to look a certain way,” he replied. “Although it always comes with unexpected costs.” Without further elaboration outside of a grimace, he pushed open the door, and light streamed out as they stepped in. The interior of the building was more or less what he’d expected, with a central reservation of a few tables, but the rest otherwise empty, although nowhere near as broken down as the exterior had him believe. The catwalks that provided access to the upper levels looked sturdy and polished, while the floor was free of the dust and detritus that he had expected. It was brightly lit from spotlights that shone onto the tables, which were littered with a wide array of weaponry, as well as a number of people lounging in various poses around them. The low hum of chatter ceased abruptly as they entered, and the only noise in the cavernous space became the click of their boots on the concrete.
As they neared the group, those reclining on the chairs straightened up, and the one or two slouching on the tables folded their arms. He got a good look at all four of them. Three were clearly military at some point in their lives, which led him to think mercenary. The fourth, a woman, didn’t have quite the same mannerisms, but the way she assessed the room constantly made him think veteran, nonetheless. She was tall, thin-faced, and dressed in the same fatigues as Guillaume, but there was something to her that seemed familiar, a tang that he’d caught on the man over the past few nights, and that still hung around his cabin. Another vampire, great.
“Well, thank God for that,” she deadpanned. “Ranger Bill.” Lincoln ignored her as one of the other men guffawed. He was well over six foot, and both his neck and arms were corded with thick muscle. Poking out from under his t-shirt, Lincoln caught a flash of a tattoo, clearly made without the help of a professional, but one he’d recognized from his time in the Army. A marine. He unfolded his arms and stood to his full height, flashing a grin at Lincoln. His eyes, sharp and intelligent, belied his size, and stood out by virtue of their piercing blue from his otherwise stubbled-and-cropped dark brown hair.
“Easy now, Sofia,” he said in a low, Southern-laden rumble as he held out his hand. “Thissun looks more like a Stumpy Jenkins t’me. I’m Mort, where and who?” Lincoln moved forward and took the hand, shaking it with a firm grip, but nothing that matched the vice-like clamp of Mort’s fingers.
“Lincoln, Afghanistan, 6th Green Berets,” he said, repeating the mantra. The man grunted.
“First Recon, same hell,” he grinned. “You makin’ the intros, boss?” Guillaume nodded, and Mort retreated. Lincoln took up a position to the left, away from the vampire woman, eyeing her as he did so. She returned his gaze with cool dispassion, and looked away.
“This is Lincoln, as he said to Mort, here, former sergeant with the Army special forces,” Guillaume said, clearing his throat, although Lincoln had a strong suspicion that it wasn’t an automatic reflex. “You have already met Mort, formerly First Reconnaissance battalion of the US Marine Corps,” Mort nodded. “And my associate, Sofia. Here we also have Jensen, former Army Ranger, and Pietr, from…?”
“South Africa,” the man replied, bluntly. Tall and powerful, he sported short blonde hair, and spoke with a heavy Afrikaner emphasis on his accent. He nodded at Lincoln.
“Quite,” Guillaume replied, after a brief moment of hesitation. “We all know why were are here, a simple search and destroy mission for an artifact we believe poses a threat to this immediate vicinity. Most of you should have noted the initial deposit into your bank accounts, and the balance will be paid on successful completion of the task, or into a beneficiary’s account as stated in the contract.”
Lincoln watched the other men nodding and wondered just how much they actually knew about their opponent. Guillaume talked through the strategy for the next fifteen minutes, making sure each of them were familiar with the particular specialisms of the group – Mort and Jensen for fire support, Pietr for demolitions and breaches, Lincoln for reconnaissance and “advisory”, whatever the hell that meant. Guillaume didn’t deign to explain what Sofia’s role was, and the brunette primarily studied her fingernails for most of the briefing. Quite frankly, Lincoln was uncertain about the whole thing. The assembled team looked capable enough, but then, so had his squad in Afghanistan, and they’d still been torn apart by the…
demon
The name still seemed to lodge in his brain every time he tried to attach it to a sentence. It’s not that he had too much of an issue accepting magical creatures existed – he turned into a wolf at will, after all – but including terms like that made his stomach turn, and also led him to ask questions about his basic understanding of how the world worked. He’d never really questioned what he’d seen that night, never wanted to think about it too much. His brain had rationalized and reformed the event over and over into something approaching a situation that his benchmark could approximate. It must have been a special-forces operator, he’d thought. They must have been hidden in the walls, and he must have blanked out sections of what happened. To learn that it had been one creature was horrifying, but trying to process it was even worse.
Guillaume was going over the details of what they were likely to face, but Lincoln felt the need to get away from the group for a while.
“Going out for some fresh air,” he grunted at Guillaume, who regarded him for a moment in the same way that a large cat might size up its prey, before nodding brusquely.
“Fine, don’t stray,” he said, and Lincoln nodded, making his way up the metal staircase to the side of the room, climbing up to the mezzanine, and again to the third floor, before the roof access fire door was visible. He went through, and the relief was palpable, then. He had a feeling that it wasn’t just because of the atmosphere, charged as it was, but also the effects of whatever magic Guillaume had cloaked the warehouse with in the first place. He sensed, more than consciously noticed, its effect lessening as he stepped into the brisk evening air, his breath fogging as the door closed behind him.